The Champagne of People

I would consider myself a crush-prone individual.  Most of my life was spent in a perpetual state of unrequited love, jumping from one boy who had no interest in me to the next.  I spent hours alone, imagining what it would be like to be swept up in a romance.  I watched my friends’ relationships intently, preparing for the day I had a relationship of my own.  

​

I became comfortable, though, in the perpetuity of rejection.  No one *ever* liked me back, and because I didn't have to worry about any sort of follow through,  I allowed myself to fantasize wildly and develop an interest in people I had no business being interested in (teachers, gang members, you name it).  In fact, choosing inappropriate people often helped mitigate my desire, leaving me less devastated when feeling were inevitably not mutual.

​

So, when I first saw, let's call him "Tex" one week into a master's program at LSU, it didn’t matter that the back of his t-shirt read “BOOGER” over a big fat “69”.  It didn’t matter that he was a rowdy underclassman who actually stepped on me as he was climbing over the seats of the recital hall to sit with his friends.  He had lovely eyes and smooth, tan skin.  His boisterous laugh, and slightly chubby gut, and hint of Texan twang had me hooked.  I had another crush.

​

​

"It didn’t matter that he... was a rowdy underclassman

who actually stepped on me as he was climbing over the seats

of the recital hall to sit with his friends."

​

​

In the following days, I joked with my friends about the completely inappropriate and unrealistic crush I had on the sophomore tenor.  But as these things seem to go, the more we talked about him, the less of a joke it became.  I actually wanted this guy.  All I knew about him was that his name was Tex, and when I was contacted by a church looking for a soprano section leader and they mentioned that they had already hired a tenor named Tex, my heart may have lept a little, but it couldn’t be the same Tex.  My luck was never that good.

But it was.

​

We began to spend almost two hours a week alone in a car.  That’s a significant amount of time to spend with someone.  It was an especially significant amount of time to spend with someone I liked.  A few weeks in, Tex suggested we stop for lunch on the way home.  We began to get lunch every Sunday.  We began to be friends.  He would join me for lunch between classes.  He became integrated into my friend group.  

One night, as we celebrated one of my friends ending a terrible relationship, Tex asked to stay at my place, claiming he was “too drunk” to make it home… which was across the street.  I set him up on my couch and got ready to go to bed—alone.  Tex asked me to watch TV with him for a bit and before I knew it it was 6:00 AM and we had been makin’ out for the past five hours.  THINGS NEVER WORKED OUT LIKE THAT FOR ME.  I liked a boy, and he liked me back.  

​

"I was prepared for a theoretical romance, but not a real one."

​

We continued to date over the next few months.  He regularly spent the night, but not in the way you might think—we would talk about music and our futures and stay up late watching South Park or listening to Barbershop.  We never had sex, I wasn’t ready.  I met his parents when they came to town for a concert he was in.  When I flew home for Christmas my sister and I joked about how, after 22 years of being single I’d end up with the first guy I dated.  I didn’t hate that idea.  Tex was honestly everything I had ever pictured and hoped for in a partner... up to that point.

 

Three nights before Christmas, as I decorated the tree with my family, Tex told me that he was dropping out of school, that he’d be staying in Texas, that he would not, in fact, be picking me up from the airport as we had planned.  Later that night on the phone I let him take the lead with how we should handle this.  I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t want to push him into anything.  He, to my skeptical delight, was the one who suggested we stay together, that we give long distance a shot, but we ended things about a month later.

​

Tex really *was* everything I had ever wanted, but being with him taught me that there was so much more that I wanted—things that I couldn’t have known I wanted until someone was unable to give them to me.  

​

If back in 2015 I had written a guide for how the ideal romance should unfurl, ours would have fit it to a T.  I saw him and was instantly attracted, the universe conspired to bring us together in a natural way, we developed a friendship that turned into more.  I wouldn’t have changed a thing, but that’s largely because I was not a fully formed romantic partner.  When I met Tex I had all the makings for an amazing partner, but I only knew as much as I could observe from society and culture, which I should point out, is very little.  I was prepared for a theoretical romance, but not a real one.

​

"there was so much more that I wanted—things that I couldn’t have known I wanted until someone was unable to give them to me. " 

 

.     .     .

​

I would imagine that unless you are the world’s most self-aware individual, you have experienced something similar to what I have just described.  This is not a revelation—the notion that we learn a lot from each relationship, even the blips.  At the risk of sounding trite I’d like to state the obvious: everything you want right now is almost certainly not everything you really want.

​

So date around.  Wait to get married.  Lean into your relationships, and don’t consider ending one a failure.  We can’t know what we don’t know.  We learn by doing.  We learn by loving.